The role of role playing in A Farewell to Arms Listening to the radio today, I heard a song written a couple of years ago that reminded me a lot of the relationship between Catherine and Henry in Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms. In this song, a girl asks a boy if he will be strong enough to be her man. He asks this question many times, each time changing the scenario in which he places them for the worse. Plaintively he begs, "Will you be strong enough to be my man?" She seeks reassurance about her man's strength by inventing roles for him to play just as Catherine and Henry invent roles to protect themselves from discovering their insignificance and helplessness in a world indifferent to their well-being. it is their way of escaping the awareness of human mortality revealed by war. Hemingway uses role-playing as a way to explore the strengths and weaknesses of his two characters. By contrasting Henry's orderly life with Catherine's upside-down life, and letting each take on a role that brings them closer together, Hemingway shows the couple's inability to accept the harsh and gratuitous quality of life. play to escape or withdraw from your life. The ability to create characters who play roles, whether to maintain self-esteem or escape, is used remarkably well in A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway is quite explicit in making us understand that role-playing is what happens through the thoughts and actions of the main characters. During Henry and Catherine's third meeting, Henry thought, "this was a game, like bridge, where you say things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or some stakes" (30 ). This meeting becomes a turning point in their relationship as the two subsequently become more and more comfortable with their roles and easily adopt them whenever the other is nearby. This is also evident from the fact that they can only successfully play their roles when they are in private and any disturbance interrupts the game. The intrusion of the outside world in any form makes their role-playing difficult. Evidence of this difficulty is seen at the Milan racetrack, where Catherine tells Henry "I can't stand seeing so many people"(131).